John Walters Quotes
In recent years, we have been sending a clear, consistent signal about the harms of drugs, particularly marijuana, which for most young people is the first illegal drug that they are exposed to.
The "Formula" was to legalize all drugs, This would break the Drug Cartels and the power they held in Mexico, The money that could be saved from the failing drug law enforcement could be spsent on substance abuse prevention and treatment. He also felt that government should not intude on personal life style and health decisions. He was particularly intent on legalizing marijuana which unlike alcohol and other illicit drugs does not cause death.
The prestigious commission had been appointed in 1939 and had studied the problem for 5 years. The findings refuted many of the claims that had been made by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
Hearst personally wrote all the anti-drug editorials of his newspapers.
Marijuana was and still is a health and social problem in that people who tend to use it---especially young people---tend not to focus on their friendships, their work and study obligations, their own development and welfare. However it is nowhere near the degree of deleterious problems of alcohol and other drugs like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. There is no record of anyone dying from an over dose or marijuana while alcohol and other drugs kill hundreds if not thousands a year. But none of those health emergencies compare with the flu which each year kills over 20,000 Americans who do not get inoculations or highway crashes which kill about 50,000. Yet Nixon did not characterize these as “national emergencies.”
This type of statement made by otherwise respectable government officials has developed a view on the part of many Americans that the Government lies about marijuana. See {617560}and {593334}.
John Walters was a British radio producer, presenter and musician. Initially a schoolteacher and a jazz enthusiast, he played trumpet in The Mighty Joe Young Jazz Men and the 1960s pop group The Alan Price Set before joining BBC Radio 1 in 1967, where he was John Peel's producer from 1969 to 1991.
